BOB ARUM REMAINS adamant in his belief that Conor McGregor’s upcoming boxing match with Floyd Mayweather is ‘a farce’, but doesn’t begrudge McGregor the massive sum of money he’s set to pocket on Saturday night.
Arum crossed paths with McGregor on Saint Patrick’s Day in New York, when the two-weight UFC champion walked Arum’s prized Irish recruit Michael Conlan to the ring for his professional boxing debut at Madison Square Garden.
The 85-year-old Top Rank founder and CEO was charmed by the MMA superstar, but not enough to be enthused by McGregor’s own pro boxing bow in Las Vegas.
“McGregor was very lovely when he came to New York to help Michael, to walk him to the ring,” Arum recalls. “He is a lovely guy. I give him all props. He’s going to make a lot of money, and good for him.
“But I’m not going to lie about it. It is a non-competitive athletic event. You can sugar-coat it any which way.
I mean, if you didn’t have the names, where it’s going to be a big cash-grab, wouldn’t you say, ‘Okay, McGregor, before you fight a Mayweather, fight some journeymen’? You know, ‘Eight or 10 rounds, and let’s see what you can do.’
“Instead, never having had a professional fight, to go in and fight one of the greatest fighters of our era – if not the greatest – I mean, it’s an abortion. It makes no sense other than as a cash-grab.”
Much of the discourse surrounding this weekend’s scrap has alluded to the fight’s impact on boxing, for better or worse, with many fans and pundits suggesting it might curtail the sport’s recent resurgence should it fail to justify its own hype.
Arum, whose Top Rank Promotions recently inked an enormous deal with ESPN which will see many major fights beamed free-to-air to 90 million homes across the United States – including a potential Michael Conlan homecoming bout in 2018 – believes the blame will lie with the people, and not the sport, should Mayweather-McGregor leave a sour taste on Sunday morning.
“Boxing is back, especially now that ESPN is taking such an active role in the sport, offering it free on the air – we’re getting massive ratings, great sponsorship. Boxing is on its way back. That’s why I have said what I’ve said about this fight.
When this fight turns out to be a farce, which I believe it is, people shouldn’t blame boxing. They should blame themselves. There was a movie once called Dinner for Schmucks, where somebody threw a dinner and had all morons at the table. Remember that movie? Well this is an event for schmucks. Anybody who buys it has only themselves to blame. Nobody is putting a gun to anyone’s head to lay out money and watch this.
Arum then touched upon McGregor’s team’s decision not to employ a specialised boxing coach for the bout, which was first revealed to The42 by John Kavanagh last month.
The Hall of Fame promoter’s contention is that, even if McGregor had the greatest boxing coach of all time in his corner, it still wouldn’t make a difference to the outcome of Saturday night’s bout.
He also scoffed at the notion that, with another six months’ preparation, McGregor could become a competitive boxer; even a fight with Paulie Malignaggi would be a step too far, Arum suggested.
“McGregor’s team know they have no chance! They’re going to do this and walk away with a lot of money. That’s the plan.
If they got the greatest trainer in the history of the sport, if they could raise Angelo Dundee from the grave and put him in McGregor’s corner, he still wouldn’t stand a chance!
“Another six months of training wouldn’t do any good. Let me give you an example. You watch some basketball, don’t ya? LeBron James, great basketball player, sensational athlete, right? If you put him in training as a boxer for six months and put him in with Anthony Joshua, what happens? Joshua knocks him out in 30 seconds.
“It’s the same thing. It’s a different sport! With tennis players, the ones that are top-caliber are the ones that have been playing since they were 10 years old. Because that’s how they learn the game.”
Arum did however reiterate his admiration for McGregor as an athlete within his own field, but concluded that his prospective shortcomings on Saturday will be accentuated by the rather straightforward fact that he has never experienced a professional boxing fight.
“It’s nothing against Conor McGregor,” he said. “He’s a great MMA combat sports guy, I don’t begrudge him, he’s going to make a lot of money.
“But he’s not a prizefighter. He’s not a boxer. Period. End of story.”
Tune in to Close Calls on The42′s Facebook page at 4pm on Friday for our Mayweather-McGregor preview, featuring analysis from boxers Eric Donovan and Jason Quigley as well as UFC star Joseph Duffy.
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Very hard on all the athletics who came fourth in past Olympics and missed out on a medal….Knowing that one of the medal winners was Russian….
@John003: It’s perverse to continue to celebrate the achievements of the best, brightest, fastest, strongest when history teaches us that these winning athletes are doped to the gills. Athletics is all about doping. If you’re feeling sorry for these fabled “clean” athletes then the penny hasn’t dropped for you.
@Sean: That’s correct, banning any one group is total hypocrisy, Doping in sport is all pervasive and they know it.
@Clever Jake: Codswallop yourself, of course you brought politics and Putin into it . This is about politics of course, the montrous Putin who wont surrender the sovereignty of his country to the hedgemoney of Washington.
@John003: Agreed, any doped up athlete beaten into fourth place by other doped up athletes deserves a medal.
If you want to think you’re hip by using words like hegemony, at least learn how to spell them.
Don’t think I’ve ever read a positive article about Russia from the western msm. Wonder is there anything good about the country.
@Bairéid Rísteard: How is this a case of Western media spin?
The IOC have banned Russian athletes from competing for Russia. We know they carried out state-sponsored doping. I’m struggling to find how your comment is relevant – this article is just reporting facts.
@Malachi: never said it was media spin. Just thinking out loud really.
@Bairéid Rísteard: You haven’t watched Rocky 4 then.
@Bairéid Rísteard: yeah was there twice over the past few years nice place to visit and great people and surprisingly they don’t all hate the “west”. just stupid americans mostly but sure who doesn’t. lol
@Bairéid Rísteard: a lot of their athletes are very positive
@Honeybadger197: Rocky looked like he was doped.
@Bairéid Rísteard: Russian troll outed.
@Bairéid Rísteard: Check out the documentary ‘Icarus’ on Netflix. The level that the Russian government went to to assist doping for the Sochi olympics defies belief.
@David Cullen: “Stupid Americans” and the Russians are “great people”!!! LOL! Oh you’re SO ‘right-on’. SO ultra-cool! Stupid di@k.
@David Cullen: I’ve met too many Russians in Vietnam & Thailand and they are anything but ‘great people’.Drunken,arrogant,ignorant & rude are words that spring to mind.BTW- why do idiots like you think it’s ‘cool’ to hate America? Have you a village idiot mentality? I don’t believe you’ve ever been outside your parish let alone bloody Russia.
@Kieran Conroy: Go to your safe space, you’re making a fool out of yourself.
@Fake Avast: Yep.And Vietnam,Indonesia,Malaysia,Hong Kong,the list goes on and on.Only one parochial culchie round here & it ain’t me! Now off to bed with ya-cows to be milked in the morning.
@Justin Barrett: My ‘safe space’is the whole planet.That’s why I travel it.
@Fake Avast: Why do you live in Ireland? You are not Irish.If you don’t like it,leave.Bye!
When’s the USA, UK and China getting their bans?
We all know they’re at it too. Can’t just be Russia
@Cian Rynne: Well China at least….. Remember the Chinese woman on the Turtle soup who took the gold from Sonia O’Sullivan…
@Cian Rynne: you should give your evidence to wada then
@johnp: and what will wada do with it? Use it to wrap their chips or shove it down a hole in the floorboards?
@Cian Rynne: With Russia it’s state sponsored. There’s a difference.
@Cian Rynne:
You dont seem to want to follow facts at all and just straight for the “wwhhatt about them!!”
@Stephen Coveney: plenty of British and American coaches and athletes implicated in doping.
Just that the media has a very strong anti Russian bias, easier to hear about the big bad Russians than it is to hear about nations closer to home
@Cian Rynne: Please, say its not so. I want them all to be sqeaky clean like my hero’s Alberto Salazar and Mo Farah. Well ok, but the Russians spiked their drinks you’ ll find.
hopefully the innocent athletes still get their chance to shine.
@gjpb: if it looks like a Russian bot, talks like a Russian bot and shites on like a russian bot….. It must be a russian bot!!
@Snotser Galligan: Kinda fitting that your profile pic is a Muppet. What’s the problem with entirely innocent athletes being allowed their chance to shine ?
@Snotser Galligan: what are you slobbering about?
you don’t think innocent athletes should be allowed compete?
@gjpb:
They can. Just dont use the russian doping agency as proof that they are clean. Lets just hope the russian authorities grow up a bit and allow their countrymen to get tested somewhere else and compete.
@Stephen Coveney: yip, that’s what happened with this years world athletics championships.
Good , cheating bsatards
Something is a bit fishy that the United Kingdom Olympic team only 3-6% had asthma now 60-70% do!
Part of me feels sorry for the clean athletes that dreamt of representing their country at an Olympic games
@Declan burke: it’s naive to believe that clean athletes exist if indeed they ever did. Where have you been the last twenty years?
@Sean:
No its not. The vast vast majority of people who have competed at the olympics have been clean. you just seem to want to muddy the waters with unfounded accusations
@Stephen Coveney: ha ha hilarious. The vast majority that you can’t name were clean perhaps. If you can remember their names then they probably won something and were pretty much guaranteed to be doped. Do you know I heard that in the LA Olympics they introduced new equipment that could detect minute quantities of drugs for the first time. They had so many positive tests they were in a serious dilemma so eventually they just shelved all the results as to do otherwise would have shut the Olympics down. Now that’s what you call Integrity folks.
I’m sure their footballers are clean….after all the World Cup is being held in Russia……….!
@Paul Furey: fifa sitting on over 20 positive tests.
@KEV: That sounds messy……..
@Paul Furey: the French deliberately hand balled to get to the last tournament ahead of the Irish and FIFA looked the other way. What is the difference between the French doing that and the Russians taking drugs? None as far as I can see.
@Sean:
Thats cause your an idiot. One man in one moment of a match instinctively using his hand to control the ball is no way comparable to an operation run by a government in which they systematically drug their own athletes so that they can feel a bit more important cause they won a few more medals.
@Stephen Coveney: State sponsored cheating is still cheating. It just has the words State sponsored before it. The point I was making was that if cheating is so reprehensible to the sporting principles of fair play then the Henry handball should be treated similarly. Henry was decent enough to admit it after the match. He said “I will be honest, it was a handball. I played it. The ref allowed it. You should ask him”.
@Stephen Coveney: also I’m not an idiot and reject that accusation in its entirety. Idiots put pencils in their nose and say wibble and I clearly do not fall into this category.
The IOC is hopelessly corrupt. The decision to ban Russia is entirely political, Russia is no worse a drug cheating nation than the Chinese or the USA. The doping agencies are pawns in the game. On the same day it forced Pat Hickey back onto the Irish Olympic Committee today as well. Says it all.
@Garry Coll: They were caught doing it on the state level by a whistleblower. I’m sure China is better at hiding it. I don’t think the US govt is involved in doping it’s athletes The athletes do a good enough job themselves.
@Garry Coll: Are you serious? The Russians were caught red handed doctoring thousands of samples. Yes everybody dopes. But not everybody has a secret service operation to swap out piss samples. The only shocker here is that the Russians were allowed to compete at Rio.
@Garry Coll:
nice that you brought up Pat Hickey since he said himself that Putin was trying to intervene to get him released in Brazil. Peas in a Pod. Rest of your post in just usual russian “we’re not to blame, everyone else is”
@Jason Power: They totally bribed the IOC to take part in Rio, as is there modus operandi. Should have received the death penalty instead of the slap on the wrist they got. Russian “athletes” were justifiably booed by the crowds in Rio.
Just wait for Trump to tweet that the USA should not compete either, “Fake Olympics” the orange snowflake will moan.
@Jack O’Connell: Only a trump fan would believe he has nothing to do with Russia while calling calling other people names.
A nation of computer hackers run by a crook and his oil baron cronies. Cheating is in their blood. No innovation in the arts or sciences either. If it wasn’t for oil, they wouldn’t produce anything the world wants. And don’t get me started on their behaviour on European beaches. They have the manners of farm animals.
@₱I₷₠₷ ੩⑭: Disgraceful
@₱I₷₠₷ ੩⑭: and what about Russia then?!
Watch Icarus on Netflix, it’s fairly shocking. Sneaky Russians
Yeah Putin is my hero..anonymous snowflake wimp he is not.
“Sneaky F**cking Russian.”